I don't really see a problem with people playing a character that is the opposite sex. It's not really a big deal. However, I do think that pretending to be the opposite sex just to mess with people is a problem, but that's just my opinion.

If it is a nameless avatar with the same stats as the other, I usually go with the male. This is for both my sex and since I like looking at men. As for people picking the opposite sex for 'better looking' reasons, it's fine. Sometimes there are certain items limited to only one sex, so it's nice to play around.

I'd pick the female under the stat attributes, if I'm in a perfectionist mood where I have to go through the game as every character, or if it's the only character with a certain class. A good example is Diablo 2, where the magic-based user is a female and the only choice had I wished to choose the mage.

I'm a guy and I love playing as a female in games when ever I get the chance. Most of the time I love the clothes and their hair...and the male character normally looks ugly and dull. They rarely if ever have the same hair styles for the male characters in games that allow both, some games do but not very often sometimes never. And the clothes often look ten times better on the female character then the male clothes. I personally would like to see male versions of the same hair and clothes for both genders. And vise versa. I think it's unfair they have opposite clothing. There should be an option to choose the same clothing. Yes I am aware it would probably take longer to render male versions of each clothing style/equipment but I don't care. Yes I'm a girly guy and I'm proud of it. I love High Heels and styled hair. They never have feminine male lead roles...and when they do most of the time it depends on what "time period" its set in.

Be my friend... NOW lol

*blushes* heh ok :3 I didn't expect anyone to agree with me, too many guys are either too straight to play a female lead role or so straight that the only reason they play a female lead is because of their body -_-;; Which I find to be incredibly annoying and ignorant not to mention pigish of them.
And a straight gamer wouldn't be cought dead playing a feminine male lead role unless they look past that for the gameplay aspect which is rare.

I'll play as both, depending on the game though, if the game features stats based on gender i'll pick the gender with the best stats. But for games like Phantasy Star Portable where you make your character, I choose female just because I feel the clothes look better.

Then there's games where you have to spend money to be a female character...I don't usually spend the money to be a female, needless to say. =|

When the main character is female I have no problem playing it. When I have the option to pick my gender I usually have multiple characters both male and female. Like in Skyrim, I like to see the different armors on each gender, or sometimes the female has nicer looking stuff.

The only problem I have is when people are pretending to be the opposite gender over an online game. Its fine if you're guy playing a female character, but when you're pretending to be a female playing a female character then you're a total creep.

I hate when people say they'd rather look at a character of the opposite sex on TV...it's a character, not a person. -__- That's the only thing that bugs me haha. But for me, it really depends on the game and the character. I have absolutely no problem playing as a guy, but in Harvest Moon games, I'd rather be a girl, and I like playing as a girl in mmorpgs. But in a lot of fighting games, I prefer playing as a guy. It just depends, haha. I see nothing wrong with playing as someone of the opposite sex even if you could play as someone of the same sex. As said, it's just a character.